Three Bad Writing Rules and How to Avoid Them

If you're a writer, you probably shouldn't read this. I will be speaking a lot of truth swaddled in satire. I will be telling you what you shouldn't be listening to as I tell you that you shouldn't be listening to anything. I humbly tell you now that I shall make a hypocrite of myself to save you from being a foolish beta reader (because, if we're all honest, knowing all the cool writing rules doesn't make you a better writer but a terribly annoying beta reader). 

• Show Don't Tell

For all of eternity writers were paid to disobey this rule. And then we started cranking out cheap slave labor novels for Walmart shelves and suddenly everything had to be "show-don't-tell". Well, let me tell you something. I will never work in a factory for a dollar a week and I have no desire to be the next harlequin mass paperback author. 

I am a storyteller, not a story-shower. 

"But," you say. "It's always better to see the wedding than to be told they got married." 

Nope.

Let me show you a line from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

"Dear reader, I married him"

Readers don't so much want to see Jane and Mr. Rochester' wedding as hear Jane say those words.

At face-value "show-don't-tell" is decent advice but taken too seriously leads to white-washed flamboyance. 

And I'm not saying tell-don't-show. That's just as stupid. But keeping this arbitrary rule at the forefront of your art makes everything into a thriller or heartthrob or a horror. Suddenly it's "only-show-and-never-tell"

Remember. YOU ARE A STORYTELLER. 

Stop reading articles on what to do in your story and just write something already. 

• Find Your Audience and Niche Market 

Immature writers are always prefacing their titles or chapters or sentences with when. Stuffy writers (or beta readers) want to know why. 

Why are you writing this story? Who are you writing it for? Don't say everyone. You have to have an audience, genre, and age group. 

My audience is fourteen–eighteen-year-old girls (in other words creepy old men). I write satire that keeps you from killing me because I escape while you're laughing. I write because I'd kill myself if I didn't. This particular story is just keeping me from going loopy, I guess. 

But. It's never enough. Still, I'm asked why, why, why. 

Know what. Just write the story already (or read my novel and tell me if you like it). But don't ask me why because some article told you to. 

I get publishing companies want to label my very-unique work so they can put it on particularly easy-to-see shelf. But I think God gave us a straightforward solution. 

Who are you targeting? 

God: Sinners

Who are sinners? 

God: Everyone 

Therefore, the Bible is for everyone and is your bestselling book. 

Label my books if you will, but I am convinced I write for everyone, too. Change my mind; tell me you hate my stories and I'll tell you that you don't love reading books. 

• Eating Chocolate is Basically Writing and Helps you Find Your Voice 

Last is really two issues that I've combined into one. 

People like to write long articles on how to find your voice and how eating chocolate is basically writing too. 

As if riding a horse is the same as reading a book, because both do things to your thighs and rearend, and then you cry out with pain once both are finished. (That's your voice). 

As you're sitting there eating your chocolate and reading articles on how to know your writing voice Ernest Hemingway is rolling in his grave from laughter and Elizabeth Goudge is telling you, "Dear, maybe you shouldn't be writing or eating right now, but dancing at the edge of some cliff and collecting wildflowers to throw to the sharks who are all of our friends." 

Writing is writing, and nothing else but writing is writing. And your voice? That's your words being written. And yeah, it might be less confident or boring at the start. But so, what. That's the voice you've got for now and there ain't nothing you can do about it except try to write some more of what you want to write. 

(And beta readers might not like your book, but they might not have yet reconciled to the fact that they are sinners, too, and the Bible was also written for them)

• Bonus: One Good Writing Tip

I've only ever received one truly good piece of writing advice: write every day. And even this I had to disregard for a time when life demanded I live and speak more than write. But whenever I do write, I have written and ignored music, chocolate, and rules. After all, that's what all the great authors have done. We like to tear apart art and talk about how to do the same with our own gifts, but nobody talks about the fact that most writers starved and raved mad in order to write relatable literature. And they wrote. 

And I write.

Twitter is a nice place for a mad writer. If you have enough confidence to put the extra rolls at a party into your pocket or keep tea bags in your purse, then you should be on twitter posting random thoughts all day just to see what I mean.

But you know what? This is just what's worked for me. Don't take it as another rule that will debilitate your pen and cause you to be the sort of judgy beta reader who never even gets to see the book cover because she forgot that books are allowed to be outside the spectrum of rules.  

Remember, writing advice is the reason we have so much garbage coming from Chinese factories. Ignore everything said by everyone including me. Be free and write. Anybody telling you how to do intuitive stuff should probably shut up... just look at the government psyoping American Dreamers into thinking they have to brush their teeth every day and yet we have more people than ever losing their teeth to decay. 

Those of us who know better, the writers and dreamers and beta-readers-who-also-love-books, have perfectly healthy teeth as proof. 

We even smile for the camera. 

I hope this has been helpful, or that you didn't need it anyways.